English is relatively easy to learn, but not to master (2018) • Hacker News Board

Re: English is relatively easy to learn, but not to master (2018)

#261

Post by pipingdog » Sun, Mar 28, 2021, 3:44 PM UTC

dghf wrote: post #248

IgorPartola wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My first language is Russian. I learned English from 12 to 14 to a basic level and from then came to the US and learned the rest of what I know here. Some thoughts: 1. English has a very simple, pre-defined sentence structure. Run-on sentence are discouraged. The language has almost logical decisions regarding the use of the verb “be”. Words are rarely skipped because they are implied. By contrast Russian is much mor…

> Word munging is uncommon in English. When a new word is coined it is mostly atomic (app, tweet, selfie). You rarely can take two existing words and combine them with a prefix, a suffix, an ending and get a new word that is grammatically correct. Prequel. Tweetstorm. Brexit. Clusterfuck. Omnishambles. Freegan. Romcom. Stagflation. > Or “defenestrate” when you mean “toss out the window”? The word usually appears in i…

Fuckin' who the fuck do you fuckin' think you're fuckin' fuckin' with you fuckin' fuck? Fuck!

Re: English is relatively easy to learn, but not to master (2018)

#262

Post by ghaff » Sun, Mar 28, 2021, 3:45 PM UTC

Al-Khwarizmi wrote: post #234

toyg wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, that sentence is bullshit. Italian has a construct that matches the English one precisely: io sto mangiando , I am eating; io sto leggendo , I am reading; lei stava facendo , she was doing... It's just a form of gerundio . As an Italian speaker, that's actually one of the easiest English forms to learn.

Yeah, the same applies to Spanish. I remember I was surprised when I learned English at school, because they seemed to make a lot of emphasis on the present continuous and past continuous, and I found them trivial: they work exactly the same as in Spanish, i.e., at least off the top of my head, every English sentence analogous to "I am/was eating" can be translated literally into Spanish directly as "Yo estoy/estaba…

>"what do you eat?"

It's a grammatically correct sentence but it's asking something else (ambiguously). A native speaker would probably respond with "What do you mean? What do I like to eat? What type of food do I normally eat?" But they probably wouldn't take it, unless adjusting for a poorly phrased question, as "What are you eating right now?"

Re: English is relatively easy to learn, but not to master (2018)

#263

Post by pipingdog » Sun, Mar 28, 2021, 3:46 PM UTC

MandieD wrote: post #158

lordnacho wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even accents from Britain itself can be weird. Ever spoken to a Scot, a Liverpudlian, or a Brummie? Even people who've spoken English daily for decades will do a double take if they're not used to it. If you listen carefully, the range of vowels is quite wide, for the same word in different accents. The probably throws off a lot of people.

Even native speakers can have trouble understanding some British accents. Most of my family has lived in Texas for several generations and are monolingual English speakers, but one cousin was born in and has lived his whole life near Liverpool, and sounds a bit like it (omitting long story about immediate aftermath of WW2 and my feckless great uncle). His wife is from Cheshire and has a rather strong accent. I unders…

Trying to check into a hotel in Glasgow with bad jet lag put me nearly in tears.

Re: English is relatively easy to learn, but not to master (2018)

#264

Post by timthorn » Sun, Mar 28, 2021, 3:55 PM UTC

ghaff wrote: post #217

gerdesj wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ophthalmologist is derived from old Greek. I have never visited an eye doctor but I get my specs from an optician. Eye doctor makes sense as a concept and I have said it myself but is not routinely used. The Normans brought Old French with them and that became the court language. Old English was more Saxon based. The classic examples of the effect of that invasion are meat vs animal names eg beef (French) and cow (Sa…

>I have never visited an eye doctor but I get my specs from an optician. You sure? At least where I live, you get an exam from an "eye doctor" (typically an optometrist) when you get a prescription. An optician fits and sells glasses. Ophthalmologists are M.D.s who have broader latitude in prescribing medications, etc.

This is one of the differences between UK and US English. In Britain, the term "eye doctor" just isn't used.

It's of a type with legislator vs law-maker; it's only really in the past few years that politicians in the UK have occasionally been referred to as law-makers.

Re: English is relatively easy to learn, but not to master (2018)

#265

Post by soldehierro » Sun, Mar 28, 2021, 3:58 PM UTC

raverbashing wrote: post #88

soldehierro wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Angloexceptionalism" really gets on my nerves to no end, and the worst part of it is that it seems it's mainly anglophone monolinguals that are making these outrageous claims, like English being intrinsically superior to other languages or being exceptionally easy to learn. Sure, English is really damn useful, but the grand scheme of things it's no more fit to be the global lingua franca than say Mandarin or Hungari…

> it's no more fit to be the global lingua franca than say Mandarin or Hungarian. Sounds like an outrageous claim done by a monolingual ;) These are the languages with the biggest barriers (tonal + alphabet in the case of Mandarin and weird case system in the case of Hungarian). So no, those are the worse examples you could have picked. French could work, or maybe Japanese with a romanicized alphabet could work. Heck…

Grammatical complexity, in my opinion is overhyped as a barrier to language learning. In my own experience, after enough time and pratice you eventually internalize grammar structures without a problem. The real issue is learning enough vocabularly to express yourself not simply fluently, but eloquently, and to be able to make it through any text you find.

Also, a few problems in your argument against Mandarin: tone really isn't a barrier. The writing system, which is not an alphabet, would actually present difficulties, but I wouldn't consider it an intrinsic part of the language - it could be changed. Writing English isn't much better, but similar complaints could be made for French.

(It should be noted that Manadarin morphology, on the otherhand, seems to discourage borrowing words, and most things are imported as calques. This could be viewed as a either good thing or a bad thing.)

Languages, in general, are around the same level of complexity. We can make comparisons and say that English inflection is massively simpler than Hungarian's , but we shouldn't concluded based on that assessment that English is simpler than Hungarian, but that this complexity is simply distributed differently.

English has a lot of relative benefits: it's closely related to a lot of widely spoken languages. And a lot of people speak it. It's not even close, even as a speaker of Spanish, which has more native speakers than English, it feels like a Sisphysian effort to find content that's just as high quality as I have been accostumed to in English, and inn any type of quantity. But none of these advantages are intrinsic to English.

My central thesis, after all, isn't that Mandarin or Hungarian, or even as easy to learn for most of the (IE speaking) world. It's that the supposed advantages of English aren't its grammar, and that English isn't a superior language by any means. History, not lingusitics, has allowed English to enjoy as much widespread diffusion and prestige as it does today.

Re: English is relatively easy to learn, but not to master (2018)

#266

Post by soldehierro » Sun, Mar 28, 2021, 4:02 PM UTC

nullsense wrote: post #75

soldehierro wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Angloexceptionalism" really gets on my nerves to no end, and the worst part of it is that it seems it's mainly anglophone monolinguals that are making these outrageous claims, like English being intrinsically superior to other languages or being exceptionally easy to learn. Sure, English is really damn useful, but the grand scheme of things it's no more fit to be the global lingua franca than say Mandarin or Hungari…

It's not easier to learn because of grammar or vocab, but simply due to network effects. If you want to learn it, whoever you are, and wherever you live and whatever your mother tongue is there is the highest possible chance on average that you can access people who speak English, find high quality reference materials, and find native media that interests you. If you run those considerations through all possible lang…

That was the point I was trying to get at, that liguistically there's nothing "special" about English, as many people, as you can see in this thread, would claim. That's not to say there isn't a huge disparity between English and pretty much ever other language on the face of this earth, but we can ascribe it all to factors of history rather than any lingusitic factor. Once you establish a lingua franca, it tends to self-reinforce its position.

Re: English is relatively easy to learn, but not to master (2018)

#267

Post by soldehierro » Sun, Mar 28, 2021, 4:13 PM UTC

bonoboTP wrote: post #31

soldehierro wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Angloexceptionalism" really gets on my nerves to no end, and the worst part of it is that it seems it's mainly anglophone monolinguals that are making these outrageous claims, like English being intrinsically superior to other languages or being exceptionally easy to learn. Sure, English is really damn useful, but the grand scheme of things it's no more fit to be the global lingua franca than say Mandarin or Hungari…

As a Hungarian speaker who also knows other languages, I think there is indeed a difference. To construct even quite basic sentences in Hungarian you have to learn much more rules than to do the same for English. At a basic level English feels like just putting words next to one another. I mean basics like "I go in the house. You eat dinner." To say these in Hungarian as a beginner you'd have to either rote learn stu…

I'll admit my ignorance of the grammatical complexities of Hungarian beyond the fact that it's highly declined and has a really interesting case system, though I will remark that the modern lingustics community generally ascribes to the theory that all languages are equal in complexity. (This isn't necessarily an established, of course, as complexity is something that will likely never be fully quantified).

Ultimately though, learning languages is kind of a paradox in the sense it's both fairly easy and extremely difficult at the same time.

Re: English is relatively easy to learn, but not to master (2018)

#268

Post by kosievdmerwe » Sun, Mar 28, 2021, 4:17 PM UTC

dqpb wrote: post #5

Everything is relatively easy to learn, but not to master

Same true for any language too. Depending on the size of a language's vocabulary learning 10,000 or 20,000 words is a matter of years of effort.

Re: English is relatively easy to learn, but not to master (2018)

#269

Post by the_af » Sun, Mar 28, 2021, 4:42 PM UTC

globular-toast wrote: post #120

ggambetta wrote: post #99

> The “-ing” progressive form of present tense (“I am reading”) is unique to English from other European languages (in French “Je mange” can be translated as both “I eat” and “I am eating.”) Huh? We have the same construction in Spanish, which is another European language. "I read" -> "[yo] leo"; "I am reading" -> "[yo] estoy leyendo".

It didn't say you can't express the same thing. Of course you can. The point was the present progressive tense is unique to English. Also, the translation of present progressive in English is more often than not simple present in Romance languages. I only know French but, example "I am eating" would be "je mange" in most contexts. The French way to express progressive, as "je suis en train de manger" is relatively un…

> When I say "I'm eating a sandwich", the primary verb is "to eat". I'm telling you my current state as a side effect only.

I'm not sure I understand the uniqueness. In Spanish this would be, in the context of a conversation:

"Qué estás haciendo?"

"Estoy comiendo un sandwich"

Note this is idiomatic and the most common way of saying this, I'm not forcing it.

"Comiendo" (from "comer", "to eat", is the -ing form in Spanish, and it's widely used).

Re: English is relatively easy to learn, but not to master (2018)

#270

Post by fader » Sun, Mar 28, 2021, 4:44 PM UTC

oAlbe wrote: post #209

orbital-decay wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This has another side: non-native speakers are expected to understand different accents and flavors of English just like an anglophone would. For example, as a Russian native speaker, I had real trouble comprehending even a slightest French accent, while having zero issues with others. I'd imagine there are a lot of ears "incompatible" with my own accent, so I spent a fair amount of time on getting rid of it.

What did you do to get rid of your accent?

I'm not the person you asked but I am someone who worked to change my accent (successfully enough that I have gone from a thick, easily identifiable accent to not having anyone guess that I was not local to where I live now in the last 15 years or so).

There's no real trick to it other than paying attention. Record yourself speaking, listen closely to how the sounds you use differ from the accent you want to have. Then practice saying those sounds over and over until they become natural. Keep at this for several years.

It's painful to do (though I find it less so if you focus mostly on specific sounds rather than listening to your full speech -- it's easier to separate the sound from the revulsion of hearing your own voice that way) but it works.